Tracking down the ancestral home

Abbey Hotel, Roscommon

We've just come from drinking Irish coffee beside an open fire in this 18th century manor house in Roscommon - feeling very mellow!  The view directly outside our window is of a 12th century abbey (the hotel is called the Abbey).

We travelled today from Westport to Roscommon, via Rooskey and Kilglass parish, where our ancestor, Francis Hanley, lived from 1805 to 1835.  In 1835 he and two mates planned an uprising against the British rulers, and stole a gun from the Protestant minister - Francis and his mates were all Catholic, and Catholics were not allowed to own guns.  They were caught and sentenced to death, later commuted to life imprisonment in Australia.  Francis Hanley was set free after 14 years and married a girl who had come out to Australia in 1849 on the "Earl Grey" ship for "Irish Orphans".  Jane Hogan had been in the Ballymanagh (Ballymena) poorhouse in County Antrim, but because of the Famine was sent off to marry one of the convicts who were finishing their sentences and probably causing trouble as there were too few women in the colonies.

The view from our hotel window - ruins of Roscommon Abbey

Francis and Jane settled down and had lots of children.  Unfortunately Jane died in childbirth with child no 8, but Frank took care of all the children and eventually established himself as an upright citizen.  Their eldest child, Catherine, married an Irish Protestant, which probably would not have happened if they had remained in Ireland.  Catherine was my great-great-great-grandmother.

In 1994 Alek and I attended the Hanley (Ainle) clan rally in Rooskey, the seat of the Hanleys, meeting all the Irish, British and American Hanleys.  Many had left during and after the Great Famine.  Evidence of this is all about in this part of the country - the land has been divided into smaller and smaller plots, there were more than 8 million people in Ireland at the time, today there are only around 4.5 million.  Subsistence farming was the norm, but with the tiny plots for each family, disaster was just around the corner.

Strokestown, the location of the National Famine Museum, is only a few kilometres from the location of Francis Hanley's family plot, as this was one of the areas hardest hit by the famine.  If he hadn't been a naughty boy and been sent to Australia, he probably would have been amongst the millions who died of starvation.

At the Hanley clan rally, people were encouraged to tell the stories of their ancestors.  Many of the Americans told of the Ballykilcline evictions, where hundreds of people from the Rooskey area were evicted from their land, and the lucky ones made it to America.  I was reluctant to tell the story of Francis, and began by saying "you may not want to hear this story, as Francis Hanley was the black sheep of the family, a convict in Australia".  When I finished my story, there were cries of "he wasn't the black sheep, he was an Irish hero!"  I suppose it depends which side of the equation you are looking at.

I have copies of the petitions made on behalf of the three who were committing "outrages" in the Irish countryside at that time, signed by their parish priest, Brian McDermott, and many of the upstanding citizens of Rooskey (also named as Russkey).  The details include the location of the house of the Protestant minister.  We tracked this down, at the time it was the largest house in the village.  Interestingly, it is now owned by the Hanleys!  We also looked for the Protestant church, but were told it had been dismantled by the Catholic population of the village as revenge for the repression by the British.

site of Francis Hanley's plot

It is now easier to find exact locations based on GPS, so we tracked down Francis Hanley's plot of land, which has recently been built on - good to see life again in these locations, when we were here in 1994 it was sad to see the tumbledown building left on the plots after the evictions and the famine.  There are many new houses and estates in and around Rooskey, which is located on the River Shannon.

We also visited the Kilglass cemetery, just outside Rooskey, where the Hanleys are buried.

Today we are travelling back to Dublin, then tomorrow we face the long trip back to Australia - but on reflection, it is not as long as the journey faced by the convicts back in 1836!